Tutorial
Intro Ready to create your own dungeon? Then you are at the perfect place to start. This tutorial will help you learn the basic of dungeon creation in Dungeon Sandbox, so you can quickly get started with your new creation. As a dungeon creator, besides the default options available to all players, you have an access to a special set of options which allow you to create and modify your dungeon. Minimap Before we explore the creator options, let's take a look at our starting location. If you open your minimap, you can see that your initial position is X51 Y51. This is also a default starting position for any new player that enters your dungeon. No one besides you and a co-creator can enter it before you publish it. You also appeared in the dungeon facing North which is a current starting direction of any new player. Note that each direction has its own number as displayed on the walls around you: North - 1, East - 2, South - 3, West - 4. Direction numbers are used for setting starting direction or, let's say, destination direction for portals in your dungeon. Starting position and direction can be changed in the dungeon settings. Coordinates can take values from 0 to 99, so you can create a really large dungeon (10000 tiles in total) - that is, of course, if your fantasy is that large too. There are a few more thngs worth mentioning concerning the minimap: # The map is looped, so if you go north from X51 Y99, you will end up at X51 Y0. # You can create and remove tiles while viewing the minimap - just right click the spot you'd like to edit. # You can left click tiles on the minimap to instantly teleport to any location (only as a creator). # You can use M keyboard button to quickly open the minimap. Creator options Now that we figured out our location, let's get to studying the creator options which allow you to create your dungeon and modify it in many different ways. Click the following button to switch from player to creator options: Types of creator tools Creator options (tools) are divided into 2 categories - Primary Tools and Secondary Tools. Primary tools are the ones any creator must use to to make a dungeon and Secondary tools are optional ones which can be used to add some extra features to the dungeon. Click the primary tools button to view available primary tools: Tile tool - add and remove tiles First thing you'd want to do when making the dungeon is to create some space: corridors, rooms, etc. Tile tool will help you with both adding and removing dungeon tiles. First click the tool to activate it and then click the wall in front of you to destroy it, thus creating a new tile, or click a tile in front of you to remove it. Keep in mind that destroying a block also removes any events and decorations on it. Don't forget that you can also add and remove tiles when viewing the minimap without using the tile tool. Decoration tool - decorate your dungeon and customize its looks Now that you know how to expand your dungeon, it's time to learn to decorate it and customize its looks to your liking. Decoration tool, besides letting you customize textures on any wall, ceiling or floor, allows you to put texts, images and Youtube videos anywhere - which can serve as clues that help to make progress in your dungeon - and even customize them using a CSS syntax (follow the link below to learn more and see examples). To use the tool, first click to activate it and then click a wall, a ceiling or a floor in front of you to edit it. There are many ways to style texts and images, make sure to visit the following Wiki sections to learn more information about styling annd editing surfaces: - Styling - Editing Surfaces Practice Example 1: Golden rotated text with black background. Let's put a golden slightly rotated text with the black background on some random wall. To do this, we need to select the decoration tool and click the wall directly in front of us. Then type some text in Msg / Img / Video field and paste the necessary CSS style in the style, which in our case would be: color: gold; background: black; transform: rotate(-30deg) Example 2: Kitten image with green background, tooltip and a link to a private giveaway. Let's put an image of a kitten on the wall! To do that, all we have to do is insert a link to the image in the Msg / Img / Video field, in our case it is https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720x405/p0517py6.jpg. Now we can add a link to the giveaway in the Link field which will open in a new tab whenever it is clicked, e.g. https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/hqFyn/one-more-dungeon will take a player to the private SteamGifts giveaway. Keep in mind though it is a good way to share bonus giveaways in your dungeon, but the main ones better be shared as treasures which will be kept in the inventory and influence player's stats. More on that later in the Event tool section. We can now make a tooltip - a message that will pop up whenever a mouse cursor gets over our decoration: just type the message in the Tooltip field, e.g. Sweet kitten. Finally, let's add some texture! It can be any image, just like the one with the kitten, or some color, for example green in our case. Here's how our filled fields would look: Event tool - manage all kinds of events that will happen in your dungeon Event tool allows you to create and edit event objects in your dungeon. Just like with other tools, you first have to click to active it. After you do so, click a tile or a wall in front of you to add a new object or edit existing one. You will see multiple options which allow to configure your events in a wide variety of ways. Keep in mind that you can press Tab or Delete button to reset all events you triggered in the dungeon (that won't affect other players if your dungeon is published). It's very handy when creating and testing your dungeon. Visit the following Wiki section to learn more about ediiting event objects: - Editing Event Objects Practice Example 1: A door that can be opened with a lever. Let's see how objects can interact with each other, e.g. how a lever can open a door. First things off, we should select the Event tool and create a door by clicking a wall in front of us. It already has two default images set for its closed and opened state - you can change those to any images you like or choose from the catalog of objects on this Wiki, e.g. catalog of doors can be found here. Each object in a dungeon has its own unique ID which is used for other objects to interact with it. You can see it at the top when editing object settings. Now we need to create a switch at some other place in the same way and make it trigger our door whenever it is used. It will already have certain default images set upon creation - just like any other object you can create. When editing your new switch's settings, you can notice that some field there are different than those of the door, e.g. a switch can have target IDs! This is exactly the field we need to make our lever open our door - just insert the door ID here, e.g. 477 based on the screenshot above. You can also insert multiple IDs here separating them with comma to make a single switch trigger multiple objects at once - quite cool, huh? Try to interact with your new switch now and see how it opens and closes the door. By editing Extra Triggers field of your door, you can make it open only after being triggered several times, e.g. setting Extra Triggers to 1 would require the door to be triggered 2 times in order to get opened. This way you can make players search for 2 switches to open a single door. You can also modify object's looks using the style field in a similar way as you would do with decorations. Try inserting the following in the style field of your switch and see what happens: opacity: .5; transform: rotate(90deg) scale(.5); This transformation will make the switch half-transparent, half the size and rotate it by 90 degrees. Example 2: NPC that requires a certain item and opens a new path. Let's create a quest character that would ask a player to bring some item. When a player brings the item, a character disappears and opens a passage behind himself, allowing the player to continue the journey. First, let's create a wall that would disappear when a player completes the quest, thus opening a new path. Select the event tool, click the tile in front of you and choose the Interactive Wall object. Interactive walls have multiple options, e.g. they can be opened with an item, they can be made penetrable (allowing players to pass through them) or they can be hidden at start and only appear once triggered by some other object (check Initially Open checkbox), thus blocking some path and changing dungeon structure, etc. In our case though, all we need is the ID of our Interactive Wall, since we will use it to trigger our wall by the quest character when he receives an item from us. Now we need to make a step back and create an NPC on the tile before the Interactive Wall. And finally create a chest with the needed item nearby. Let's remove both chest images to leave the item itself, call it a Cookie and set the cookie image: http://www.pngall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Cookie-Download-PNG.png Now we have a cookie in the dungeon which we can pick up and put into the inventory. Now let's make our NPC want this cookie! Select the event tool and click the NPC to edit it. First off, let's give him a name by setting Tooltip Name to, let's say, Cookie Wizard. Then, let's make the guy a little bigger by changing his Min Width for 0 to 70%. Now, let's type in Cookie in the Needed Item field - this will allow us to use the Cookie from our inventory to trigger the Cookie Wizard. And finally, type the ID of the Interactive Wall into the (Item) Target IDs field - this will make the Cookie Wizard trigger the Interactive Wall once he receives the Cookie. Check the Spent Upon Use checkbox to make the item disappear from the inventory after use if you don't plan to use it anywhere else. Now, simply use the Cookie from the inventory to give it to the Cookie Wizard and see guy open the path and disappear. This event could be further improved by attaching secondary events with the Secondary Tool (see more info below in the Secondary Tools section), e.g. we could attach a message to the NPC to make it say something to us whenever we interact with it, - or to make it say something upon opening a passage and disappearing - or make the background music change upon completing this quest - or make some other evil NPC appear behind us and block the way back, making us only move forward etc. etc. Treasures Treasures are giveaways in a form of an object which are kept in the inventory upon finding. Sharing giveaways as treasures is the prefferable way to share giveaways for several reasons: - A player can access such giveaways at any time by simply opening the inventory. It eliminates the need to, for example, copy the links to found giveaways in a text file or save the giveaway tabs. - Amount of found treasures influences a player's score and leaderboard position. Create a treasure (SG giveaway) To create a treasure, select the event tool, click a tile in front of you and choose the Item Chest object. This will create a chest that contains a default Key item (you can then, for example, type Key word into any door's Needed Item field to make that key open that door). In order to put a treasure instead of an item in the chest, simply paste the link to a giveaway in the Item field - now it will be counted as treasure which will open a new tab with the giveaway upon clicking from the inventory. Now set the corresponding giveaway image by copying the image link on SteamGifts (right click on the image - copy image URL) and inserting it in the Item Image field. Finally, change Item Description to the name of the game. Now whenever a player opens the chest, he receives a treasure (a giveaway) which goes into the inventory. You can also get rid of chest, but leave the treasure lying on the floor - simply remove both chest images. Secondary tools Secondary tools are optional ones which can be used to add some extra features to the dungeon, e.g. event messages which appear when a player performs certain actions. They all work in a similar way - first you create some secondary object with the secondary tool, e.g. an event message (each object will get its own unique ID), and then make some event object (let's say, a switch) trigger that secondary object by its ID. Now, each time the switch gets pulled, the message appears. Other secondary tools work in a similar way. You can visit following sections of the Wiki to learn about the secondary tools: - Event Messages allow to add pop up messages upon interactions. - Audio (Sounds and Music) allow to add sound effects or music upon interactions. - Transfer Events allow to move objects around upon interactions. - Area Textures allow to set certain textures to large areas. Dungeon settings Settings option allows you to change general settings of your dungeon, such as its name, starting position or default textures. More information on editing dungeon setting can be found in the following Wiki section: - Dungeon Settings. Ask your questions If you have questions about dungeon creation in Dungeon Sandbox, feel free to post them in the corresponding Wiki section or ask them in the Discord chat: - Dungeon Sandbox FAQ - Steam Dungeons Discord chat